


Coming Home

by SecondSilk



Category: Seachange (TV)
Genre: Community: fanfic100, Gen, Post-Canon, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-13
Updated: 2010-07-13
Packaged: 2017-10-10 13:00:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondSilk/pseuds/SecondSilk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Travor goes away to university in Canberra and doesn't come back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Home

Rupert's phone buzzed loudly on his bedside table, but it was his little sister yelling at him to answer it that actually woke him up. The sun was already leaking through the shutters on his window and he had to squint to read "Trevor" on the display. He hit 'accept' before he'd even finished sitting up.

"This is Rupert," he said, habit overriding his nerves.

The, "Hi, Rupe. Ah, it's me," he got in reply was familiar even after eighteen months without a phone call. Eight weeks without an email. Three years without seeing each other.

"Hi," Rupert said, trying to work out whether he should say, "why haven't you called me, you bastard?" or "what's been happening to you up there that you can't call your best mate?"

"Can you pick me up from Port Deakin this afternoon? Otherwise it's two hours to wait for the bus."

"Sure. I'll pick you up outside the cinema."

"Four-thirty."

"See you then." It was as though nothing at all had changed.

*

Rupert finished up early at the Star and drove across the bridge. It was still early enough that he had to pull the visor down in the car, although the shadows were lengthening by the time he pulled up across the street from the cinema.

He got out, because the only person waiting there was a woman his age with great legs and a cute tank top. It was only when she raised her hand to shield her eyes that Rupert recognised her. He stopped dead in the middle of the road until someone beeped him.

"Hey," he managed, when he stepped up on the pavement.

She had the grace to look embarrassed; pulling on her lip in the way that meant, 'you'll back me up with my dad, right?' It had become very familiar their last three years of school; through discussions about university and applications for scholarships.

Rupert scowled; he'd always wanted to have more faith in Kevin, but he'd always had less to lose by disappointing him. "Have you said anything to your dad, yet?"

"Wrote him a letter," she said. "Didn't send it."

"No," Rupert said, non committal. He cast around for a neutral topic of conversation, in the wake of, well, the whole thing. "Did you come down this morning?"

"Left yesterday. Spent the night in town."

"Do you want to shower at my place before you head over to the caravan park."

"Sure."

As they drove, Rupert told stories about all the things that had gone wrong with Miranda and Craig's house. It got them across the bridge and back to the house.

*

Rupert paced his room while she showered, glad that she'd brought her own toiletries; he wouldn't have like raiding his sister's things for appropriate stuff. When she emerged from the bathroom, she was dressed in jeans and t-shirt and looking more like her old self than Rupert had thought possible, although the jeans had butterflies embroidered on them and t-shirt was pink. Rupert's little sister hadn't worn things that girly since she'd turned nine.

Rupert realised he was staring. He got a chagrined smile and familiar awkward shrug in response to his quiet, "sorry."

"You'll wait for me to finish with dad?" she asked.

"Sure," he said. "I'll be out on the pier if I'm not here."

The pier was where you went if you wanted to think uninterrupted, at least if you were Rupert. She smiled and nodded once, giving him the space to freak out a little before he got used to things. He was grateful, until he was staring at the play of light across the waves and asked himself how long it taken her to get used to things, without her best friend there to help.

*

It was well after dinner when Rupert heard steps behind him along the pier. The wind had come up and taken the heat out of the fading sun, but he hadn't bothered to return to the house for a jumper.

"Did you write me a letter, too?" he asked, detached in his curiosity.

He sat up to lean on his hands and watch the waves from where he had been staring at the clouds. She dropped down beside him, in his shadow, and swung her legs over the end of the wood.

"Yeah. I was going to say something every time I rang you up, as well."

Rupert waited, but she didn't say anything more. He was willing to wait longer for that.

In the meantime he asked, "What's your name, now, anyway?"

She laughed. "Veronica."

"Cool."

"I first through of Tracy, because it starts with the same letters."

"No way," Rupert said. Tracy McNicol was Rupert's worst bad break up.

She laughed at him. He rolled his eyes. "Then I thought of Lucy," she said. "After the boat, not my mother." Rupert rolled his eyes again and grinned getting the joke. She struggled.

*

They ended up lying on their backs with their legs over the end of the pier. They had spent hours like that before Trevor had gone away, talking to the clouds. On their right, the sun disappeared behind the rocks.

"What do you plan to do now?" Rupert asked.

Veronica shrugged. "Dad still seems to think I'll come back to run the caravan park."

"I'm going back up north in a month," Rupert told her. "Do you want to come?"

"Sure."

They stayed to watch the stars come out.


End file.
